GeneWatch PR: Response to Government DNA proposals

Responding
to reports that DNA profiles of innocent people arrested in England, Wales or Northern Ireland would be retained on Britain's National DNA Database for six years after arrest, GeneWatch UK's Director, Dr Helen Wallace said:
"The massive expansion of Britain's DNA database has failed to deliver genuine benefits in terms of
solving crime, instead eroding public trust in policing. The
announcement expected later today is a sign that the Government has lost the
capacity to listen to the voices of the people it is supposed to represent".

The reported
proposals differ significantly from the law in Scotland because they affect all 986,185
people with records on the DNA Database who have no police record of conviction
or caution (1). This is a small retreat from the Home Office's original
consultation proposals, which included a longer retention period for DNA
profiles of twelve years for some people accused but acquitted of more serious
offences. The original proposals were widely criticised as unlawful and based
on flawed scientific evidence (2,3).

Home Office
figures suggest that testing more DNA from crime scenes has helped to solve
more crimes, but massively expanding the number of individuals with records on
the database has not. Matches between individuals' stored DNA profiles and DNA
profiles from crime scenes include matches with victims and passers-by and
false matches which occur by chance, usually when the crime scene DNA has
become degraded. The number of false matches is expected to dramatically
increase when DNA profiles are compared across the EU, beginning in 2011.

Ministers
have continued to cite misleading figures and irrelevant cases to support the
retention of innocent people's DNA (4). The DNA database plays no role in
miscarriages of justice - such as the Sean Hodgson case - because these depend
on the retention of crime scene DNA evidence, not individuals' DNA, which can
be collected from them at any time.

"Ministers' claims that their policy has
delivered benefits are based on streams of dodgy figures and endless misinformation",
said Dr Wallace. "Resources that should
have been spent on better policing, including collecting crime scene DNA, have
been thrown away. Young black men are the people most likely to be victims of
the Government's attack on everybody's rights, and hundreds of
thousands of children have been criminalized".

DNA
profiles can be used to track individuals and their relatives, and following
the adoption of the Crime and Terrorism Act 2008, can be used by the police,
security services or secret intelligence service to identify a person, even if
they are not under investigation for a crime. Records on the DNA database are
linked to police records of arrest, which are now kept until age 100 and can be
revealed to employers as a result of an enhanced criminal record check.

The DNA
database was first established by the Conservatives in 1995, but was massively
expanded by two changes in the law made in 2001 and 2003, when Tony Blair was
Prime Minister. The changes allowed DNA to be taken on arrest from the age of
ten for any 'recordable' offence and kept until age 100, even if the person
arrested is not charged or convicted. The Scottish Parliament rejected similar
proposals in 2006, and in December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights
judged that the approach taken in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was in breach of the European
Convention on Human Rights.

For further information contact:

Dr Helen
Wallace. Office: 01298-24300; Mobile: 07903-311584.

Notes for Editors:

(1) Scottish legislation allows the retention of DNA profiles from a small number of
innocent people in cases where a person is arrested for a relevant sexual or violent
crime, proceedings are commenced and either dropped or result in a verdict of
not guilty. In such cases the profile can be retained for a period of three
years. This can be extended for two years on application by the police to a
sheriff, with a right of appeal by the individual. At 1
December 2007
there were a total of 440 individuals' DNA profiles held under this
legislation.

(2) Critics
included scientists, lawyers, children's organizations, black community groups
and organisations in Northern Ireland, where the Assembly was not allowed
a say in the original decision to expand the database. See: http://www.genewatch.org/sub-564539
.

(4) For
example, the convictions of Steve Wright, who murdered five women in Suffolk, and
Mark Dixie, who killed Sally Anne Bowman, both highlighted the importance of
DNA evidence. However, neither case would have been affected by a decision to
remove innocent people's records from the Database.

Wright
had a previous conviction for theft and,
even if his record had not been on the database, had already been stopped twice
by the police before the crime scene DNA profile was obtained. This means he
was already a suspect, so his DNA could have been taken by the police even if
his record wasn't on the Database. Many crimes involving DNA evidence are of
suspects who have already been identified by other means.

Sally
Ann Bowman's killer Mark Dixie was not on the DNA Database, however he did have
previous convictions which took place before the Database was established. The
case was solved when his DNA was taken following a fight in a bar, nearly nine
months after the murder. This illustrates the importance of keeping crime scene
DNA and of collecting suspects' DNA, but not of keeping innocent people's DNA
profiles on the database.

The
rape case in which Wendell Baker has been named as an alleged suspect involved
a match between his DNA and the DNA from the rape. The match occurred after he
had been acquitted for the burglary for which his DNA was taken, when, under
the law at that time, his profile should already have been removed from the
Database. However, the burglary was committed after the rape and the
match could have been obtained lawfully if the DNA in the semen from the rape
and his own DNA had both been analysed loaded to the database in the months before
his acquittal for the burglary. New procedures requiring prompt analysis mean
that mistakes like these are unlikely to occur in future.